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Fresh hand-rolled sushi. A juice bar with made-to-order smoothies. A hair and nail salon.
It's certainly not a typical drugstore. But these are among the amenities that Walgreens will offer in the former Borders space when it debuts a 24,000-square-foot store this fall in Downtown Crossing.
The Illinois drugstore chain will model the Boston location after two it recently opened in New York City and Chicago.
These massive emporiums feature sushi stations with chefs, juice markets with smoothies, eyebrow grooming bars, expanded natural and organic sections containing fresh fruits, vegetables, wraps, sandwiches, and salads made daily. The upscale shops also offer more traditional goods, such as prescription drugs, over-the-counter medicines, and household products.
"This is an opportunity to do something unique and different in such a high-profile location,'' said Michael Polzin, a Walgreen Co. spokesman. "There are a lot of people walking by on the Freedom Trail, and it will be a great destination for people who live and work in the area and for out-of-town visitors.''
Walgreens was one of dozens of retailers that had expressed interest in the property at School and Washington streets, across from the Old South Meeting House.
The site, which is just steps away from rival CVS, was vacated by Borders last year after the bookstore company filed for bankruptcy protection and liquidated the chain. Borders had occupied more than 41,000 square feet there since 1996; the grand building was originally home to the Boston Five Cents Savings Bank. Walgreens, which signed a 30-year lease, is taking over the first floor, the basement, and the mezzanine and is considering using space on the second floor.
A fitness club is one of a number of businesses eyeing about 16,500 square feet on that upper level, said several people briefed on the talks.
"We had hoped to draw a flagship retailer like Walgreens who would invest in this site. It's unlike any pharmacy you've ever seen,'' said Michael Murphy, executive director of Clarendon Group USA Inc., which owns the building. "Walgreens will bring an array of products that will address a lot of needs in the Downtown Crossing area.''
A Walgreens flagship store is welcome news for the retail district, which has struggled for years since the redevelopment of the former Filene's building, at One Franklin Street, stalled. Walgreens began talks for the Borders site months before Millennium Partners disclosed plans recently to take over the Filene's project and move ahead on construction by next year. Downtown Crossing has suffered from persistent vacancies and the giant crater left by Filene's in the middle of the neighborhood. Clarendon Group USA, which has 60 percent of its office space occupied at the School Street property, also has had a vacant storefront on nearby Washington Street.
City officials and business owners are hopeful that the arrival of Walgreens - and progress at the Filene's site - will bring meaningful change to the shopping district.
"This store is a new, unique concept, and this signature Downtown Crossing site will be a great fit for a flagship Boston store,'' said Mayor Thomas M. Menino. "It's exciting to see another piece of the puzzle coming together as we build on the promise of Downtown Crossing.''
Marshal Cohen, chief retail analyst with NPD Group, a market research firm in New York, said Downtown Crossing will benefit from the Walgreens because it will have long hours and offer a wide range of products. The first store of this type in New York, which operates under the Duane Reade brand at 40 Wall St., is open 24 hours, boasts a retro-style mahogany-polished shoe-shine area, and has a 20-foot official New York Stock Exchange in-store ticker.
"Think of it as a drugstore on steroids,'' said Cohen, who has been to the Wall Street store. "It is more of a mini merchant, with everything from drugs to duds, from baby products to beach chairs.''
Walgreens, the nation's largest drugstore chain, has not decided on hours for the Downtown Crossing location, but the Chicago site operates from 6:30 a.m. to midnight during the week, Polzin said.
As in its other locations, Walgreens is planning a sleek open space with a European boutique feel, while maintaining the distinctive architectural details of the historic building, including decorative plaster ceilings, travertine walls, intricate brass radiator covers, trim details and doors, and columns.
"There are half a dozen if not more uses under one roof that meet the needs of every customer,'' said Jeremy Grossman, an executive with CBRE/Grossman Retail Advisors, which exclusively represented the owners in the retail leasing of the property. "It's just the start of possibilities and retail change in Downtown Crossing.''
Jenn Abelson can be reached at email@example.com. Follow her on Twitter @jennabelson.


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Create a Website Account - Manage notification subscriptions, save form progress and more.
Show All Answers
Recyclables accepted in your 96-gallon recycling cart are listed below.
Items not accepted in your 96-gallon cart are listed below:
Contact Public Works Department for proper disposal of the above non-recyclable items.
Contact Republic Services, Incorporated if your recycling cart is damaged or lost.
The Public Works Department invites residents to bring applicable recyclables to the Public Works building located at 321 E. King St, Boone, NC 28607. Listed below are the accepted items:
Recycle mixed paper by placing it in their roll-out carts and leaving said carts outside and to the right of the Public Works building.
Mixed paper can include:
The public is also invited to recycle corrugated cardboard in the green corrugated cardboard recycling dumpster located inside the gate in the back of the parking lot to the left of the Public Works building between the hours of 7 am and 4 pm.
Deliver oil/filters to the Fleet Maintenance garage at the first bay garage door on the left side of the building.
During office hours (8 am to 5 pm) the following items can be dropped off for recycling:

subset: commoncrawl


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2011 Porsche Boxster S Black Edition
Price |
-- |
Production |
987 | ||
Engine |
3.4 liter boxer-6 |
Weight |
-- | ||
Aspiration |
-- |
Torque |
273 lb-ft @ 4750 rpm | ||
320 hp |
HP/Weight |
-- | ||
HP/Liter |
94.1 hp per liter |
1/4 mile |
-- | ||
0-62 mph |
5.2 seconds |
Top Speed |
171.5 mph |
(from Porsche Press
Release) Only 987 cars: Boxster S Black Edition with
comprehensive range of equipment
Stuttgart. The Porsche Boxster model line has a new luxurious top
model in addition to the sporty Boxster Spyder: The Boxster S Black
Edition limited to 987 cars. With its 320 hp – ten hp more than the
Boxster S – this edition offers a substantially larger range of
standard equipment and exclusive special options, all at a very
attractive price. The new mid-engined sports car is black all over:
Black body, black hood, and black 19 inch Boxster Spyder wheels
accentuate the muscular appearance of the top roadster. The Boxster
S Black Edition will be launched in March 2011, and in Germany is
priced at 63,404 euro including VAT and country-specific equipment.
The colour concept of the Boxster S Black Edition is consistent in
every detail. The rear side air intake grilles are painted in black
as is the twin tailpipe of the exhaust system. The model lettering
painted in black on the rear luggage compartment lid identifies the
Black Edition as much as the embossed Black Edition model
designation on the side of the fabric hood. The roll-over bars are
painted in black, too.
The black line of the exterior is continued in the interior. The
stainless steel door entry guards feature the "Black Edition" model
lettering in black. The standard Sport Design steering wheel with
its double-spoke appeal has a non-slip rim of smooth-finish leather
and sporty grips. The trim strips of the dashboard and of shift
lever or gear selector are painted in black. The dials on the
instrument cluster are black as are the partial leather seats with
the Porsche emblem embossed in the headrests. Also available upon
request: black leather interior. The limited edition badge on the
glove compartment identifies the sports car as a model of the Black
As a standard, the
Boxster S Black Edition features the otherwise optional "Comfort",
"Infotainment", and "Design" equipment packages, and therefore comes
at a more favourable price than a series model with comparable
equipment options. The wind deflector is on board right from the
factory as are the anti-dazzle interior and exterior mirrors with
integrated rain sensor, cruise control and a climate control system.
The Porsche Communication Management (PCM) including navigation
module are also standard. In addition, the universal audio interface
and mobile phone preparation are available as standard. The Sound
Package Plus creates an impressive interior sound experience. The
standard Bi-Xenon lights with dynamic cornering lights and LED
daytime running lights ensure driving pleasure and safety on dark
roads. Upon request, the Boxster S Black Edition can be
individualised even further with other options of the Boxster
programme. For example, the Porsche Ceramic Composite Brake (PCCB)
is an option as well as the Porsche Active Suspension Management (PASM)
and the adaptive sports seats with memory function.
The chassis of the Boxster S Black Edition features clear lines with
a sporty appeal. A decisive contribution to improve driving dynamics
of the limited edition models even further are the tyres size 235/35
ZR 19 front and 265/35 ZR 19 rear on particularly lightweight wheels
in the special ten-spoke design of the Boxster Spyder. As is typical
for a Boxster, the new top model of the mid-engined sports car with
its low centre of gravity as a result of the flat engine reaches an
even more impressive level of agility.
A 3.4-litre six-cylinder engine with direct fuel injection, mounted
in front of the rear axle of the Boxster S Black Edition, supplies
power to the car. Its output is 320 hp – ten hp more than in the
Boxster S. The engine reaches its rated power at 7,200 rpm, the
Boxster S power pack at 6,400 rpm. Torque of 370 Nm boosted by ten
newton metres is availabe at 4,750 rpm.
More output and more power equal more dynamics: The Boxster S Black
Edition underpins its leading position by a superior driving
performance. With its standard six-speed manual transmission, it
accelerates from zero to 100 km/h (62 mph) in 5.2 seconds, a tenth
of a second faster than the Boxster S. The top model reaches its
maximum speed at 276 km/h (171.5 mph), outpacing the Boxster S by
two kilometres per hour (1.2 mph). The mid-engined sports car is
modest only in its thirst for fuel. During the NEDC test cycle, the
Boxster S Black Edition contents itself with as much fuel as the
Boxster S: 9.8 litres per 100 kilometres (28.82 mpg imp).
To raise dynamics and efficiency even further, the Boxster S Black
Edition may alternatively also be fitted with the seven-speed
Doppelkupplungsgetriebe (PDK). This will shorten acceleration times
from zero to 100 km/h (62 mph) to 5.1 seconds, the top speed with
PDK is 274 km/h (170.3 mph). In comparison with a manual
transmission, an additional speed and an intelligent shifting
strategy lower fuel consumption to 9.4 litres per 100 kilometres
during the NEDC complete cycle.


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A leading human rights group appealed to Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah on Thursday to stop the execution of a woman accused of witchcraft and performing supernatural acts.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a statement that the kingdom's religious police who arrested and interrogated Fawza Falih, and the judges who tried her in the northern town of Quraiyat never gave her the opportunity to prove her innocence in the face of "absurd charges that have no basis in law."
Falih's case underscores shortcomings in Saudi Arabia's Islamic legal system in which rules of evidence are shaky, lawyers are not always present and sentences often depend on the whim of judges.
The most frequent victims are women, who already suffer severe restrictions on daily life in Saudi Arabia: They cannot drive, appear before a judge without a male representative, or travel abroad without a male guardian's permission.
What's the crime?
Witchcraft is considered an offense against Islam in the conservative kingdom.
In Falih's case, the judges who convicted her in April 2006 relied on a coerced confession and on the statements of witnesses who said she had "bewitched" them, according to the group.
Falih retracted her confession in court, claiming it was extracted under duress, and said that as an illiterate woman, she did not understand the document she was forced to fingerprint.
"The fact that Saudi judges still conduct trials for unprovable crimes like 'witchcraft' underscores their inability to carry out objective criminal investigations," said Joe Stork, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.
There was no immediate comment on the statement from Saudi Arabia, where government offices are closed on Thursdays, the start of the Muslim weekend.
"Fawza Falih's case is an example of how the authorities failed to comply even with existing safeguards in the Saudi justice system," he added.
The Saudi court cited an instance in which a man allegedly became impotent after being bewitched by Falih, the rights group said.
An appeals court ruled in September 2006 that Falih could not be sentenced to death for witchcraft because she had retracted her confession. But a lower court subsequently reissued the death sentence for the benefit of "public interest" and to "protect the creed, souls and property of this country," the group's statement said.
Forced divorce
Human Rights Watch's statement came a day after Yakin Erturk, the U.N. special investigator for violence against women, wrapped up a 10-day visit to Saudi Arabia during which she highlighted another controversial case that has attracted international criticism.
Ertuk met with Fatima and Mansour al-Timani, who were forcibly divorced by the wife's family on grounds she had married someone from a lesser tribe.
The couple learned of the divorce on Feb. 25, 2006, when police knocked on their door to serve Mansour the divorce papers.
At a news conference on Wednesday, Erturk said she met the wife and husband who were in a "terrible state of mind" and that Saudi officials had promised her arrangements would be made for the couple's reunion, according to Saudi newspaper Arab News.


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Bearing Change for Obama, Brammo Bikes from Detroit to DC
With help from Crispin Porter + Bogusky (featuring built-in tweetage from @bogusky hisself!), two intrepid messengers from Brammo are on a mission to present President Obama with the most energy-efficient electric vehicle in America: the Brammo Enertia powercycle.
The pair adds a dash of bloggable epic to the quest by road-trippin' it from Detroit to Washington, DC: the route automotive CEOs took when they made their pilgrimages to beg for bailout aid.
"But instead of seeking aid, were going to present President Obama with a homegrown solution to the transportation crisis," the pair writes gleefully.
To succeed in their quest, dubbed ShockingBarack, they're depending on little more than "the kindness of everyday Americans." Visit the ShockingBarack website to offer them a place to crash, a source that'll help them get in touch with the President or an outlet to fuel their motorbikes. (They promise to reimburse you the $0.30 it takes to charge them.)
If you lack the inclination or the geographic convenience to do either, follow the journey. The latest video -- where they visit the Mayor of Adrian bearing a peace offering of donuts -- appears below.


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What caused the financial mess we're in? And how do we get out of it? Two of the great economic thinkers of the 20th century had sharply contrasting views: John Maynard Keynes believed that government spending could create employment and longer term growth. His contemporary and rival Friedrich Hayek believed that investments have to be based on real savings rather than increased public spending or artificially low interest rates. Keynes's biographer, Professor Lord Skidelsky, will take on modern day followers of Hayek in a debate at the London School of Economics. Paul Mason, economics editor of Newsnight, is in the chair.
Saturday 6 August 2011
Keynes Vs. Hayek
Here's a link, from BBC Radio 4, to the debate between George Selgin and Jamie Whyte on Team Hayek and Lord Skidelsky and Duncan Weldon on Team Keynes on the virtues and vices of Keynesian economics.
Foreign ownership may be good for you, if you are a firm that is
Foreign ownership of firms is one of those topics which, for reasons I have yet to workout, generates much heat and little light. There are those who just seem to oppose it for reasons that have little to do with the economics of the situation. A working paper by Francisco Pérez-González, of the Stanford business school, looks at "The Impact of Acquiring Control on Productivity". The abstract reads,
For the geeks out there, Pérez-González interprets this evidence as supportive of the property rights theory of the firm as developed by Grossman and Hart (1986) and Hart and Moore (1990).
Empirical studies on the importance of control rights on efficiency are hindered by actual –presumably efficient– ownership patterns. Finding settings where the right owner does not own the right asset and where ownership arbitrarily changes is challenging. In this paper I aim at overcoming these problems by investigating the elimination of foreign majority ownership restrictions in Mexico. Specifically, I study the performance of affiliates of multinational corporations for which (1) ownership restrictions appeared to bind before they were lifted, and (2) parent ownership increased from minority to majority as the reform was implemented. Using detailed plant-level information, I find that multinational control leads to large improvements in total factor productivity, particularly in industries that rely on technological innovations from their parent companies. Control is also associated with higher investment –particularly in technology intensive forms of production–, and with an improvement in the skill profile of the labor force. Overall, I interpret the evidence as supportive of the property rights theory of the firm.The conclusion says, in part
In this paper I study the impact of acquiring majority ownership on the performance of Mexican affiliates of multinational corporations (MNCs.) I use the elimination in foreign majority ownership restrictions as a plausible source of exogenous variation.In short what Pérez-González finds is that a movement to majority foreign ownership, via increased control by a foreign multinational, leads to large improvements in total factor productivity and to higher levels of investment .
I find that the allocation of control does affect production decisions and production efficiency. The results show that ownership restrictions to foreign ownership harmed the production efficiency of affiliates of multinational corporations. Upon liberalization, a large fraction of minority owned affiliates became majority or wholly-owned by their parent companies. Plants for which foreign ownership translated into majority or full ownership experienced economically and statistically large productivity gains. Overall, the analysis shows strong evidence that the choice of organizational form affects productivity, particularly in technology intensive industries.
The evidence suggests that government policies directed to attract technological transfers should recognize the importance of residual control rights, particularly in countries with weak legal enforcement. Governments often limit foreign ownership to promote local interests or to prevent expropriation by multinationals. While domestic majority rules do shift the balance in favor of local partners, the impact on overall welfare is uncertain. Fear from expropriation by local partners deters foreign investors from sharing their technologies or making country specific investments, which does hurt economic performance.
For the geeks out there, Pérez-González interprets this evidence as supportive of the property rights theory of the firm as developed by Grossman and Hart (1986) and Hart and Moore (1990).
"Keynesian Death Spiral"
Jerry O'Driscoll discuses the problem at the ThinkMarkets blog. He writes,
The more powerful one believes fiscal stimulus to be, the more adept the Keynesian policymaker must be. If the stimulus has powerful positive effects when added, it will have powerful negative effects when withdrawn. Hence, the application of stimulus and its withdrawal must be precisely timed. An economist would ask from whence the knowledge to do this would come.But politicians use an aggressive stimulus to avert what they see as near-term distress which has negative effects when removed or has to be paid for so they use another stimulus to avert another near-term set of problems which ..... and the cumulative effect of which can be ruinous.
As Hassett notes, however, stimulus has not two but three stages. It may boost growth when added, but must slow growth when withdrawn. The third stage comes when taxes (current or future) must be paid to fund the stimulus. That stage is always negative in its effects. Thus, Hassett concludes that "the total impact of the Keynesian policy is negative over its life."
The Eurozone crisis: Greek recovery and the challenges of asymmetric monetary union
At VoxEU.org David Vines talks to Viv Davies about the recovery prospects for Greece following the country's second bailout. They discuss the challenges of asymmetric monetary union, Eurobonds, the peripheral economies and the current situation in Italy. Vines presents the case for stronger fiscal management and political leadership.
Friday 5 August 2011
How minimum wages encourage discrimination
Yet another unfortunate consequence of minimum wages is the encouragement it gives for discrimination. Karthik Reddy writes on this point over at the IEA blog. She explains,
Reddy continues,
The free market is a powerful tool that forces market participants to pay for their discriminatory tendencies. In a free market system, for example, if a discriminatory employer would like to hire a worker to do some task, and the employer is, say, disinclined to hire blue-eyed workers, he must be willing to pay for the extra cost of brown-eyed labour if he follows his discriminatory tendencies; blue-eyed labourers faced with such discrimination may compete on the basis of price and lower the wage they receive.Such an outcome is in this day and age an unintended consequence of minimum wages but a consequence none the less.
A wage floor, however, prohibits workers from competing amongst one another on the basis of price, and removes economics from the discriminatory employer's decision-making process. The employer must pay potential labourers, whether blue-eyed or brown-eyed, the same wage, and because the equal wage ensures that this employer will pay no price to discriminate against the blue-eyed worker, he is free to make his hiring decision on some basis other than price and productivity, and will hire the brown-eyed worker.
Reddy continues,
This theoretical discussion is not without real-world evidence; there have been instances in societies with significant racial animosity of the use of wage floors as tools to deliberately diminish the labour participation of certain groups. In the early twentieth century southern United States, for example, racist activists trying to exclude black Americans from the workforce found minimum wages to be an effective tool to accomplish this insidious goal in a seemingly inoffensive way.As noted above, modern minimum wage laws are not, we hope, imposed with such underhanded or targeted intentions. But it still turns out that the use of minimum wages to achieve discriminatory ends is indicative of the ability of wage floors to erase the cost employers must pay to discriminate. And demand curves slope downwards, as something gets cheaper you get more of it. So whether or not it is intentional it has to be recognised that discrimination increases to the extent that minimum wages rise above the market wage.
In 1909, the prejudiced Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen demanded that the Georgia Railroad fire all Black workers. Economist Walter Williams observes that instead of such a transparent and overtly discriminatory measure, the exclusion was accomplished through the imposition of wage controls: 'Instead of eliminating blacks … the arbitration board decided that black firemen, hostlers, and hostlers' helpers should be paid wages equal to the wages of white men doing the same job.'1 The strategy satisfied white unionists, who knew that when forced to pay an equal wage to blacks and whites, discriminatory employers would no longer pay any cost for their discrimination and would hire white workers at the expense of blacks. The union stated: 'If this course of action is followed by the company and the incentive for employing the Negro thus removed, the strike will not have been in vain.'
Similarly, white supremacist groups in South Africa under apartheid pushed for minimum wage laws as a way to reduce black participation in the labor force. The overtly racist Mine Workers Union, for example, demanded a minimum wage to protect their dominance in the workplace and openly stated: 'The real point on is that whites have been ousted by coloured labour. It is not because a man is white or coloured, but owing to the fact that the latter is cheap … when that [minimum wage] is introduced we believe that most of the difficulties in regard to the coloured question will automatically drop out.' Similarly, the South African Wage Board, which set minimum wages in different sectors of that country's economy beginning in 1925, 'concentrated its wage determinations only on those areas of industry where nonwhites were in competition with whites, and made no wage determinations in areas where there was no such competition.'
Thursday 4 August 2011
Incentives matter: blood file
In an article from VoxEU.org Joan Costa-i-Font, Mireia Jofre-Bonet and Steven Yen argue that paying some people to donate blood while others receive a cursory "thanks" has been shown to crowd out the altruistic donors. They write,
But on blood donations and incentives compare the above with this study: Will There Be Blood? Incentives and Substitution Effects in Pro-social Behavior by Nicola Lacetera, Mario Macis and Robert Slonim, Discussion Paper No. 4567, November 2009, Institute for the Study of Labor. The abstract of the paper reads:
Individuals might undertake certain altruistic actions guided by an extrinsic motivation, including a "warm-glow" or moral satisfaction. Trying to answer the question of whether altruistic behaviour can be incentivised, in recent research (Costa-Font et al. 2011) we investigate whether different financial and non-financial incentives have the same effect on willingness to donate when other observed and unobserved factors are controlled for. In particular, we investigate whether crowding-out takes place with all kinds of rewards, or specifically with only monetary rewards. We answer this question by exploiting a large data set representative of 15 European countries containing information on whether or not an individual has been a donor in the past and her preferences towards monetary and non-monetary compensation for blood donation. This information allows estimation of two recursive equation systems and exploration of the relationship of preferences over different types of rewards and the probability of being a donor.and
Importantly, we find that a monetary reward reduced the probability of donation consistent with the crowding out hypothesis, whilst a non-monetary reward consistently with a normal supply curve suggests a positive and significant effect on the donation probability.
These results are robust to different specifications and indicate that crowding out is a phenomenon linked to the introduction of a market-based rationale for non-market decisions, and that socially motivated individuals remain willing to donate when non-monetary rewards are offered.
Non-monetary rewards could potentially be used to incentivise blood donation as this kind of rewards seem not to remove, in the terminology of Andreoni et al. (2008), the warm-glow associated to blood giving.So incentives matter, but the form the incentive takes may also matter.
But on blood donations and incentives compare the above with this study: Will There Be Blood? Incentives and Substitution Effects in Pro-social Behavior by Nicola Lacetera, Mario Macis and Robert Slonim, Discussion Paper No. 4567, November 2009, Institute for the Study of Labor. The abstract of the paper reads:
We examine how economic incentives affect pro-social behavior through the analysis of a unique dataset with information on more than 14,000 American Red Cross blood drives. Our findings are consistent with blood donors responding to incentives in a "standard" way; offering donors economic incentives significantly increases turnout and blood units collected, and more so the greater the incentive's monetary value. In addition, there is no disproportionate increase in donors who come to a drive but are ineligible to donate when incentives are offered. Further evidence from a small-scale field experiment corroborates these findings and confirms that donors are motivated by the economic value of the items offered. We also find that a substantial fraction of the increase in donations due to incentives may be explained by donors substituting away from neighboring drives toward drives where rewards are offered, and the likelihood of this substitution is higher the higher the monetary value of the incentive offered and if neighboring drives do not offer incentives. Thus, extrinsic incentives motivate pro-social behavior, but unless substitution effects are also considered, the effect of incentives may be overestimated.
- Andreoni, J, WT Harbaugh, L Vesterlund (2008), "Altruism in experiments", in SN Durlauf and LE Blume (eds.), The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 2nd Edition, Palgrave Macmillan, 134-138.
- Costa-Font, Joan, Mireia Jofre-Bonet, Steven T Yen (2011), "Not All Incentives Wash Out the Warm Glow: The Case of Blood Donation Revisited", CESifo Working Paper No. 3527.
Interesting blog bits
- rauparaha on Greens on poverty
I like the idea of helping poor families but is the best plan really to:
- raise marginal tax rates on them,
- give them cheaper bachelor's degrees,
- increase the barriers to entering the workforce at the minimum wage; and,
- increase the cost of rental properties?
- Eric Crampton explains Why I still can't take the Greens seriously
I love the Greens on civil liberties, or at least relative to most other parties and with a big caveat on their nannying proclivities with respect to tobacco and fatty foods. And they're good on copyright. But their economic policy prescriptions...egads.
- Seamus Hogan gives us A Diatribe Against Capital Gains Taxes-Part I
I noted in my post on Labour's tax policy here that there were arguments on both sides for capital gains taxes. This was a euphimistic way of saying that there are economists who I respect who are in favour of capital gains taxes, so I wouldn't want to dismiss the idea out of hand, but I have a hard time understanding how they could come to that conclusion. So I am going to lay out the case against in a couple of posts. Most of the points below are standard fare but a couple of them I haven't seen before.
- Seamus Hogan gives us A Diatribe Against Capital Gains Taxes-Part II
I noted yesterday that the main argument put by proponents of capital gains taxes is that they are needed to encourage savings into productive investments rather than into chasing capital gains. This sounds plausible on the surface, but I'm not sure that those making that argument have fully stated their implicit assumptions.
- Seamus Hogan gives us Capital Gains Taxes Redux
A couple of comments on my previous posts have suggested two possible efficiency motivations for having capital gains taxes. Both are theoretically correct, but neither makes a convincing case for a real-world CGT, in my opinion.
- Freakonomics on Killer Cars: An Extra 1,000 Pounds Increases Crash Fatalities by 47%
Ever since the SUV craze began in the late 1980s, we've all known that heavier vehicles are safer for those driving them, but more dangerous for others on the road. Which is why we all started driving them. Now, in a new working paper, a pair of Berkeley economists have quantified not only the fatality risks of heavier cars for other drivers, but also the costs associated with them.
- Quamrul Ashraf and Oded Galor on The "Out of Africa" hypothesis, human genetic diversity, and comparative economic development
The reasons given for the vast divide in standard of living between different parts of the world are many, with some economic historians claiming the roots lie in the colonial period. This column goes back even further to the cradle of humankind in East Africa, suggesting that the genetic diversity of the tribes that dispersed to different parts of the globe determined their success many thousands of years later.
- David Starkie argues that Air Passenger Duty - damaging a major growth industry
UK aviation has been a major growth industry in recent years, with high gross value added - just the sort of industry you might imagine the government would wish to encourage. Yet recent changes to Air Passenger Duty (APD) mean that it is the most highly taxed aviation industry in the world and it is showing serious signs of fatigue.
- Mark Pennington on Ha Joon Chang: Wrong on Free Trade, Markets and Development
My first post on 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism addressed Ha Joon Chang's dubious debating tactics when discussing 'free market economics'. I turn now to some of Chang's more specific critiques of economic liberalism to illustrate these tactics in greater detail.
Wednesday 3 August 2011
EconTalk this week
Anat Admati of Stanford University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about ways to make the financial system more stable. In particular, Admati explores the implications of higher capital requirements. She argues that current policies subsidize leverage--high levels of debt relative to equity--and that current levels of leverage increase the vulnerability of the system to swings in asset prices. She then gives her response to criticisms of higher equity levels. The conversation concludes with a discussion of the role of academic economists and finance professors as advocates for various policies.
The impact of Chinese imports on innovation, it, and productivity
Writing in the August 2011 issue of The NBER Digest Laurent Belsie notes:
In Trade-Induced Technical Change? The Impact of Chinese Imports on Innovation, IT, and Productivity (NBER Working Paper No. 16717), authors Nicholas Bloom, Mirko Draca, and John Van Reenen examine more than a half million firms in 12 European countries between 1996 and 2007. They find that every 10 percentage point rise in Chinese imports in a firm's industry was associated with an increase of: 3.2 percent in patents, 3.6 percent in IT spending, 12 percent in R and D spending, and 2.6 percent in total factor productivity (TFP). The authors observe that more innovative firms tended to grow while the less innovative ones tended to shrink or disappear altogether. In fact, they conclude, a surge in Chinese imports appears to have been responsible for about 15 percent of the technological upgrades at European firms between 2000 and 2007. At the same time , that surge led to decreases in employment, profits, prices, and skill share in the affected industries. Imports from other low-wage nations had a similar impact, but imports from developed nations did not.Yet another reason to fight for free trade. An increase of 10 percentage points in Chinese imports in a firm's industry is associated with an increase of: 3.2 percent in patents, 3.6 percent in IT spending, 12 percent in R&D spending, and 2.6 percent in total factor productivity (TFP). Under increased competition from imports the more innovative firms grow while the less innovative ones tend to shrink or disappear. Overall, competition from imports is significantly increasing technological upgrading. This is all to the good.
"What may be happening is that trade is stimulating technical progress, which in turn is increasing the demand for skilled labor," the authors write. "It is not simply that patents per worker, or average TFP, increases -- total innovation in the affected firms and industries expands when they face more exogenous threats from Chinese imports." One explanation may be that companies already have certain "trapped factors," such as equipment or firm-specific skills, which they might as well try to use to develop new processes or products. Opening up to trade effectively lowers their opportunity cost of innovation.
At the same time, employment is being reallocated among firms. For every 10 percentage point increase in imports, employment falls 3.5 percent overall in the affected sectors, but this decline is not shared evenly. Highly innovative companies are more likely to grow; less innovative ones are more likely to shrink. A 10 percentage point increase in Chinese imports decreases the probability of survival of European firms by about 17 percent.
To correct for the possibility that unobserved technological shocks affected their results, the authors examine the effects of Chinese imports after China`s entry into the World Trade Organization, which led to the end of import quotas on textiles and apparel. This allows them to study industries that had widely different experiences after trade liberalization and to focus on textiles and apparel: although relatively low tech, they were still the source of more than 22,000 patents from European companies during the period they study. The authors also control for differential industry-specific time trends and exploit the fact that Chinese imports tended to increase where China already had established a "bridgehead" by the mid-1990s. The results support their main conclusion that Chinese trade spurred innovation.
The authors conclude that the surge in Chinese imports was responsible for about 15 percent of European technological change for the whole period from 2000 to 2007, but the impact now seems to be growing stronger. They write that "this effect appears to be increasing over time and may even be an underestimate as we also identify a role for offshoring to China in increasing TFP and IT adoption (although not for innovation). This suggests that increased import competition with China has caused a significant technological upgrading in European firms in the affected industries through both faster diffusion and innovation."
Monday 1 August 2011
Economists thinking about sex
I came across this piece by (non-economist) Grover Cleveland at the Pileus blog. Cleveland writes,
Cleveland goes on to note that
I was stuck at the airport for much of last Saturday and so perused the magazine racks there at some length during breaks from the pain of trying to work in an airport chair. At one point, my eyes wandered over to the newest edition of Psychology Today - a pretty awful magazine - and noticed the front cover advertising an article titled something like: Why Smart People Have Less Sex. (Emphasis added)Well, this just goes to proves I must be a genius! :-(
Cleveland goes on to note that
I instantly and without really thinking at all said to myself, "Well that must be due to their higher opportunity cost," before I even processed anything on a more intellectual level or even picked up the magazine. I decided to see if the article did touch on this (obvious) possible explanation and was disappointed during a quick perusal to see it wasn't really discussed as an alternative in anything more than a cursory fashion.May be I should point out that the tile of the Cleveland's article is "I'm spending too much time around economists". Personally I don't see how that's possible, but may be that just me.
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Sarah Monette is the author of the Melusine series of novels and much, much more, including several short stories available online. From Clarkesworld Magazine, we have "White Charles":
I accepted the mug he offered; the tea was hot and sweet and very strong. He watched, and when I had met whatever his criteria were, he said, "Me and Hob, we reckon maybe it ain't rats."
This was Fiske, then; I was relieved not to have to ask. "No?"
"No, sir. Y'see, Hob has a dog what is a champion ratter. Very well known, is Mingus. And me and Hob brought Mingus in, sir, quiet-like, feeling that what His Nibs don't know, he won't lose sleep over . . ."
"Quite," I said, perceiving that Fiske would not continue until he had been reassured on that point.
"Thank you, sir. So Hob brought Mingus in, and the dog, sir, did not rat."
"He didn't?"
"No, sir. We took him all over the museum, and not a peep out of him. And before you ask, sir, that dratted scratching noise seemed like it was following us about. Mingus heard it, sure enough, but he wouldn't go after it. Just whined and kind of cringed when Hob tried him. So we figured, Hob and myself, that it ain't rats."
"What do, er, you and Mr. Hobden think it is?"
Mr. Fiske looked at me solemnly and said, "As to that, sir, we ain't got the least idea."


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Frizzy-haired, smaller-headed orangutan may be new great ape
A remote population of frizzy-haired orangutans on the Indonesian island of Sumatra seems to be a new species of primate, scientists say.
But the purportedly newest member of the family tree of advanced animals that include humans may not be around much longer. Their numbers are so small, and their habitat so fragmented, that they are in danger of going extinct, say the scientists who studied them.
A study published Thursday in the journal Current Biology said there are no more than 800 of the primates, which researchers named Pongo tapanuliensis, making it the most endangered great ape species.
The researchers say the population is highly vulnerable and its habitat is facing further pressure from development.
"If steps are not taken quickly to reduce current and future threats to conserve every last remaining bit of forest we may see the discovery and extinction of a great ape species within our lifetime," they said.
It's the first great ape species to be described by scientists in nearly 90 years. Previously, science has recognized six great ape species: Sumatran and Bornean orangutans, eastern and western gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos. Some scientists also classify humans as great apes but others argue for a separate categorization.
The research is based on analysis of the skeleton of an adult male killed in a conflict with villagers, a genetic study indicating the population's evolutionary split from other orangutans occurred about 3.4 million years ago, and analysis since 2006 of behavioral and habitat differences.
The primates are confined to a range of about 1,100 square kilometers (425 square miles) in the Batang Toru forest in the Tapanuli districts of Northern Sumatra. Historically, the population had low levels of interbreeding with Sumatran orangutans further north but that completely ceased 10,000 to 20,000 years ago, according to the genetic study.
Aside from genetic evidence and the physical differences that include frizzier hair and a smaller head, other unique characteristics include diet, restriction of habitat to upland areas and the male's long call.
There is no standardized international system for recognition of new species, but to be taken seriously a discovery requires at least publication in a credible peer-reviewed scientific journal.
Primatologist Russell Mittermeier, head of the primate specialist group at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, called the finding a "remarkable discovery" that puts the onus on the Indonesian government to ensure the species survives.
Mittermeier, who was not one of the 37 authors of the study, said he was "very excited" by the research.
Last year, the IUCN classified Bornean orangutans as critically endangered due to a precipitous population decline caused by destruction of their forest habitat for palm oil and pulp wood plantations. Sumatran orangutans have been classified as critically endangered since 2008.
Matthew Nowak, one of the study's authors, said the Tapanuli orangutans live in three pockets of forest that are separated by non-protected areas.
"For the species to be viable into the future, those three fragments need to be reconnected via forest corridors," he said.
Additionally, the authors are recommending that development plans for the region including a hydropower plant be stopped by the government.
"It is imperative that all remaining forest be protected and that a local management body works to ensure the protection of the Batang Toru ecosystem," Novak said.
Wiratno, the director general of conservation of natural resources and ecosystems at Indonesia's Forestry and Environment Ministry, told a news conference in Jakarta that most of Batang Toru forest was designated as protected in December 2015.
He said its management will be a priority and is a "great challenge."
"We are deeply committed to maintaining the survival of this species," said Wiratno, who uses one name.
The Batang Toru orangutan population was found during a field survey by researcher Erik Meijaard in 1997 and a research station was established in the area in 2006.
It was not until 2013, when the adult male skeleton became available, that scientists realized how unique the population was, which sparked the largest genomic study of wild orangutans ever carried out to provide further evidence of a third orangutan species.
Wright reported from Bangkok.
- Star


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Carden wrestles with storyteller legacy
There are two voices inside Sylva storyteller and playwright Gary Carden. One belongs to the mountain man of letters whom author Lee Smith coined "the Appalachian Garrison Keillor." The other belongs to an orphaned child who clung to a pink transistor radio to make it through the lonely nights on Rhodes Cove.
"I was a damned lonely little kid, and I'd turn that radio on and it was like a bright night light," Carden said, his voice turned sweet on the memories of his favorite '50s radio shows.
Carden is one of the most recognized literary voices in Western North Carolina largely because of his ability to communicate the authentic experiences and cadences of a mountain culture that is nearly vanished.
As an artist, the tension in Carden's work is grounded in the double-consciousness of a man who knows firsthand the feeling of being "found wanting" and who still expresses pride in his heritage.
"I kind of turned into a missionary of some kind because I felt it was my job to communicate my culture," Carden said. "Can you tell people about mountain dialect and the way my granddaddy lived without communicating ignorance?"
For Carden, the question is personal and not abstract. His father drove an oil truck and played in a mountain band until he was shot dead in his own garage by a loafer drunk on wood alcohol.
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"It was an accident that didn't make sense. That's the kind that bothers you forever," Carden said.
His mother, only 18 at the time of the killing, left him with his grandparents and went to Tennessee.
While his story is the type of Appalachian biography that reeks of authenticity, Carden reckons what makes him real isn't his personal tragedy so much as the shared pain of growing up ashamed of his own voice.
"My granny warned me –– and most mountain people know this –– when I got out of college," Carden said. "'Garneal,' she said. 'When you get out of here, you'll be weighed and you'll be found wanting.' And she was right."
Last weekend, Carden staged his play "Nance Dude" at Western Carolina University's Coulter Auditorium to benefit the Friends of the Jackson County Main Library. It was the second performance of the two-part library benefit featuring actor Elizabeth Westall in two one-act plays that draw a line between history and folklore.
"It's a special category. It's history becoming folklore," Carden said of "Nance Dude." "There comes a time when people start decorating the facts and at some point the history becomes folklore."
The play showcases two of Carden's innate gifts: his ear for Appalachian dialect and his ability to normalize the brutality of dark mountain history with humor and humanity. "Nance Dude" re-tells the true story of a Haywood County woman convicted for the murder of her granddaughter.
Carden rem-embers his own grandmother explaining to him why his grandfather "didn't laugh much." She told the story of Kirk's Raiders shooting down his great-grandfather in cold blood and leaving the body on the front porch.
"When my grandmother told me that story, she'd pull me right to her face and say 'Don't you forget what they did to Bryant,'" said Carden. "And of course I think that's one of our greatest flaws as a culture ... the way we carry grudges."
But "Nance Dude" also gets at the root of why Carden, now in his 70s, still burns hot in quest of his defining work. Carden has won awards as a writer and a storyteller, and honorary degrees as a folklorist, but he has never gotten the one acclaim that would put to rest the prophetic fear his grandmother instilled in him.
"My work has never been considered significant enough to be published," Carden said.
Carden wonders whether his identity as a storyteller hasn't limited him.
"Playwrights have a hard time. Poets have it harder. And storytellers have it the worst," Carden said. "What do you do with a literate Appalachian storyteller? A mountain storyteller is supposed to be a hick with a wooly beard who's never read a book."
But Carden's not making excuses. Instead, he's still searching for his defining moment as an artist. He recently finished a play called "Signs and Wonders" that casts a light on the damage Pentecostal preachers from Bob Jones University did during their student auditions in mountain towns in the '50s. But he thinks there's something bigger brewing in him.
"I'm kind of in stasis," Carden said. "I need to do something significant. I'm bored and I'm not content with what I've done. I've got about 10 plays that need to get done and I know they won't be."
Some of Carden's best written works are published in a collection called Mason Jars in the Flood & other stories. The autobiographical "Harley stories" are his version of Hemingway's Nick Adams stories, autobiographical tales about growing up that carry both the personal and cultural angst of a moment in time.
Carden grew up in the mountains when the world was turning modern, and the mountain folk were being shut out of their own home. He became a man of letters, earning two degrees from Western Carolina University. When he writes about his childhood, he does it in clear and beautiful prose that hints at a fundamental conflict.
"You have to live in two worlds," Carden said. "Culture demands it of you."
Gary Carden, the artist, is still looking for the perfect way to call the world to account for the wrongs visited on Appalachian people since the Civil War and on his heart since his childhood. Like many writers, his thirst for success is fueled by a drive to hold life accountable for the pain it dispenses.
"My strength is the same as my grandparents' inability to forgive," Carden said. "I can't forget things that are wrong. I want to see justice done."


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This article is more than 1 year old
Facebook tops half-billion users, wants your innermost thoughts
400,000 years of lost productivity
Facebook now has a half-billion active users, founder Mark Zuckerberg announced Wednesday, and he's providing a new service to let each and every one of them "tell their own story."
"Half a billion is a nice number," Zuckerberg said in a video statement, but "instead of focusing on numbers," he's instituting a new service called Facebook Stories — an interactive story-sharing app where all half-billion of you can enter your own thoughts on "the impact your connections have had on your lives."
Facebook Stories can be entered right in the app, and the collection of stories can be accessed by using interactive map-based Location navigation or clicking on tiny icons in a more-straightforward Theme-based listing.
Enter, share, and read Facebook Stories by Location...
...or by Theme. We'll avoid clicking on "Grief", thankyouverymuch
As of Wednesday afternoon Pacific time, one San Franciscan had related a sad breakup story and another had weighed in with a Small Business–themed post, and a single Londoner had added a link to a YouTube video fundraiser for Great Ormond Street Hospital in the Causes theme.
In honor of the half-billion milestone, Facebook has also posted a collection of as-cornball-as-you-might-predict collection of thank-you messages from "all of us," according to Zuckerberg.
Hundreds of your new Facebookian BFFs want to send you a personal, sincere "Thanks!"
Still, a half-billion active users is an astonishing number of story-sharers — and an astonishing, continuing IT and data-center challenge, to be sure. That many users equals the combined populations — of all ages — of Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Montenegro, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, the Republic of Macedonia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK.
Or about 37 per cent of China's residents. Your pick.
But our congrats to Facebook — although there's a dark side to their success. In a February Neilsen survey, researchers determined that the average Facebook user spends seven hours per month noodling about on the social-networking service. At a half-billion users, that's well over 400,000 man-years of productivity frittered away per year.
We may have just stumbled upon the true cause of the global economic Meltdown — and its name is Zuckerberg. ®


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After three deployments to Iraq and three to Afghanistan, Staff Sgt. Dennis Swols is agitated, prone to bouts of anger and unable to really talk about his time on the battlefield.
But as Swols sits in a small office in the Robinson Health Clinic at Fort Bragg, his hand drops to the furry head beside him and his mood brightens. Settled at his feet, Lexy, a 5-year-old German shepherd, gives Swols a few moments of distraction.
It's her job. And, according to Swols, she's good at it.
"I have a hard time talking to people about my deployments and everything," says Swols, who is with the 82nd Airborne's 4th Brigade Combat Team. After taking part in the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and the march into Baghdad in 2003, he's been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress. "But having her here, I just pet Lexy. Or I'm just sitting here and we won't talk about deployments, we'll just (talk) about the dog. … My day is better every time I come in."
For 82nd Airborne psychiatrist Maj. Christine Rumayor, Lexy is a partner, a conversation starter and a living, breathing medical tool that can calm a patient and make a therapy appointment a little more enjoyable.
A slowly evolving form of treatment, animal therapy is used in only a few other Army installations, including Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. A small number of dogs like Lexy are being used almost as co-therapists. Others routinely work as service animals and are often used for animal-assisted therapy, including in visits to patients in the hospitals.
Lexy's move into therapy was unexpected. Rumayor decided to put her new puppy through the training when she realized Lexy was less of a guard dog and more of a calm cuddler. So, Lexy went through about 2½ years of training before she was able to pin on her rank — she's a lieutenant colonel — and become certified as Fort Bragg's only therapy dog.
As the Army struggles to address the broad swath of stress disorders and mental health problems brought on by more than a decade of war, one of the biggest hurdles is getting soldiers to put aside the bravado and seek treatment. Lexy, it turns out, is particularly good at that.
Van Woodruff, who was a sergeant first class, went to his scheduled appointment just a few days before he was set to get his medical retirement and move out of the Army after 13 years in the service.
"It's hard for me to come to these appointments. I can't really sit in the waiting room," said Woodruff, who suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder. "I don't look forward to this whole process of being here. … The whole process of being here is something that's agitative to my diagnosis."
But on a sunny Wednesday morning, the Alabama native is sitting in Rumayer's office. "This is the only one I look forward to going to because of Lexy. I love dogs."
Rumayor, who wrote the Fort Bragg policy that allows her to use Lexy in her practice, said there was resistance at first.
"You don't want everybody to think they can just bring their dog to work," she said.
Rumayor also has seen what an asset the dog can be in getting soldiers to seek out therapy and consistently attend their appointments.
Walking around the base, she uses Lexy as a lightning rod to attract soldiers, then draws them into conversation. On any given day, she and Lexy will wander over to the motor pool or anywhere troops might gather, to see who might be interested in having a chat.
"Stigma is one of the huge things the military is trying super hard to overcome — behavioral health stigma being the biggest one, I think. And Lexy is probably the biggest asset I have in overcoming that stigma," Rumayor said. "There's nothing better than coming to an appointment where you get to have a warm fuzzy thing that you get to pet all the time. People don't want to come in the door. When they see her coming in, it makes them want to come in the door."
And often the soldiers reward her.
On her vest, Lexy sports an Army Ranger tab and a spray of other badges and patches that she got from patients. The special forces tab came from a soldier who had been injured in a roadside bomb blast, and Lexy and Rumayor visited him in the hospital.
Navy Capt. Robert Koffman, the senior consultant for behavioral health at the National Intrepid Center of Excellence in Bethesda, has a therapy dog of his own, named Ron. And he's seen the broad impact the dogs can have.
Ron, a 3-year-old golden retriever/labrador mix, holds the rank of a one-star general and his designated military occupation is a "psych tech." He's even trained to bring tissues to distressed patients and put his head on a person's lap if he or she is stressed.
Lt. Col. Matthew St. Laurent, who is the occupational therapy chief at Walter Reed, said the use of dogs to aid therapy has been endorsed by U.S. Army Medical Command and appears to be getting more support across the military. Both he and Koffman said additional research is needed to determine how and when it is best to use the animals.
"It's tough for anybody to go to their mental health provider," said St. Laurent, who also runs the Therapeutic Service Dog Training Program. "But they need to see mental health providers and if you're introduced to the mental health community by a fluffy, loving canine, you'd be more inclined to come to the clinic and pet the dog. And one thing leads to another, and you're in the clinic."
Copyright © 2014 Capitol Hill Blue
Copyright © 2014 The Associated Press All Rights Reserved


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Nicholas Ray
Review by Cullen Gallagher
Posted on 08 September 2008
Source Bootleg DVD
Categories The Mystic: The Films of Nicholas Ray
Nicholas Ray: I'm sorry. This is so goddamn unreal, darling.
Leslie Levinson: It's true. It just happened.
The line between what is and is not real in We Can't Go Home Again is more than just a blur: it's downright schizophrenic. And not just to the extent that its narrative mirrors the circumstances in which it was made1 - Nicholas Ray, weary after decades of Hollywood filmmaking, assumes a teaching position at the State University of New York at Binghamton and instructs his students through a collaborative feature-film endeavor - but to the possibility that what we are witnessing is the manifestation of Ray's own mental breakdown. The symptoms of the disorder - paranoid delusions, warped perceptions, withdrawal from everyday life, behavioral irregularities, and a global splintering of one's consciousness - are the threads of Ray's delirious tapestry. And regardless of the many characters that pass by the screen, the one who remains at the center is always Ray. Like so many orbiting moons, the characters (all of them Ray's students) circle around their teacher, either in submission, collaboration, or defiance, and often alternating between the three as their relationship develops and Ray's own mental, physical, and spiritual states continue to deteriorate.
"I want to talk to you. Something happened to me in the night. Something that said I'll never make another film. And that's a premonition."2 Ray's words lay bare the rising frustration with commercial filmmaking that would culminate on the set of 55 Days at Peking with his physical and emotional collapse. Afterwards, Ray spent nearly a decade in Europe, and with no film projects ever coming to fruition, it seemed like his premonition might be coming true. In 1971, Ray received an invitation to lecture at Harpur College (part of SUNY Binghamton), whose new film department had been founded by Larry Gottheim and Ken Jacobs, which led to a two-year teaching position at the school.3 As captured in David Helpern and James Gutman's documentary I'm a Stranger Here Myself, Ray and his students moved into an off-campus house together, creating a film-commune in which they all lived and worked together, alternating positions behind- and before-the-camera - seemingly the pinnacle of a collaborative relationship. And while his students' own lives inspired many of the scenes4, they seem to be less individual personalities than extensions of Ray's own psychology. As Ray's wife, Susan, intimated:
[The students] were turned on by the fact that it was a collaborative effort. My point of view it wasn't at all; it was all slave labour. I don't mean that the slaves didn't benefit - and I think it was the high point of their lives - but [Ray] was conscious and they were not. He knew what he was after, more or less; they just wanted it to work for them.5
As the singular auteur at the helm, Ray invests a lifetime worth of hopes, fears, dreams, nightmares, and neuroses into We Can't Go Home Again. His supreme desire to prove his premonition wrong permeates every frame with equal parts anxiety and excitement. To those familiar with his work, its hard not to view this, his last (near) completed feature film, as the apotheosis of his career, which is not to suggest that the movie is necessarily his masterpiece, but that it just might be the most direct, unfiltered expression of "Nicholas Ray" on film. Without the interference and box-office expectations of the Hollywood studios, Ray no longer had to hide his presence in the film and, for better or for worse, Ray's identity saturates We Can't Go Home Again. In the same manner of Federico Fellini and 8½, the director and his film are consolidated, inexorable, and total.
In Rebel Without a Cause, James Dean's Jim Stark cries out, "You're tearing me apart!" And with We Can't Go Home Again, Ray has torn apart the cinematic image. Simultaneously projecting myriad formats - super 8mm, 16mm, and a video synthesizer provided by Nam June Paik - and filming the multiple projections onto a single 35mm image6, Ray was able to actualize a sense of both mental fragmentation and a sensory/emotional deluge. The images overlap with ethereal majesty, at times highly literal (such as the political footage, including riots and protests) and others deeply ambiguous (whether the psychedelic designs or the dense layering of too-many projections). It is image overload, and only sensation and emotion exist: narrative is dead, logic unknown, time disrupted, and identity discontinuous. Henry Miller's declaration of principle in Tropic of Cancer seems obliquely applicable to Ray's anarchy: "[T]his is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pats to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty… what you will. I am going to sing for you, a little off key perhaps, but I will sing.7" (Even future collaborator Wim Wenders admitted to being shocked by the film's "total negation of any sense of image8," while Jeff Greenberg called Ray's new aesthetic "disturbing… but maybe it's all part of the process of de-imagizing the Hollywood director."9) The subversion that was always present in Ray's most successful Hollywood productions - in terms of genre, character, plot, and mise-en-scene - explodes in We Can't Go Home Again. As indicated in the title, Ray can no longer return to the modes of representation with which he began his career, and if the film feels more exploratory than expert, it is because Ray is charging ahead blindly (or half-blindly, if one remembers the single eye-patch worn over his right eye at this point in his life), improvising not just a story, but an entire form and methodology. And it is this adventurer's spirit - along with Ray's steadfast dedication to "never betray myself again10" - that makes the film feel so fresh and vigorous (and vertiginous and obscure) some thirty-odd years later.
Embedded within its politically specific time-period (the film opens with footage of the 1968 Democratic Convention, and conversational references to JFK, the Bay of Pigs, and Vietnam, abound), experimental aesthetics, and unavoidable technical flaws (poorly recorded audio that cuts in and out, and is often not synched up properly), is a story of adolescent uncertainty. As with the youths of They Live By Night and Rebel Without a Cause, the students' idylls are crushed by social circumstance. "I didn't know who to believe—my parents or the television set," laments one student (Tom Farrell) in the opening narration. Later on he will confess, "I don't even know why I came back to school, these dumb machines are just making noise at me. Is this what I have to do to graduate and get a job somewhere?" Following this is Ray's entrance into the narrative. Opening a door, he is confronted by students who seem to vaguely recall his earlier movies. Ray's inclusion of one student's vocal criticisms, however, suggests a deep sense of insecurity in the director. "You're just like the other professors. You're always talking and never listen to people. You think you know it all just because you made movies and you're old." Vulnerability has always been a trait of Ray's most personal protagonists - Farley Granger in They Live By Night, Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, and even Humphrey Bogart in In a Lonely Place is vulnerable to his own misanthropy and self-sabotaging tendencies - and its certain that Ray didn't miss the connection either. (At one point, he can be seen wearing a red jacket similar to Dean's iconic windbreaker in Rebel.) But it is this sense of self-doubt that haunts We Can't Go Home Again: not only does Ray's character hang on the verge of suicide, but even the film's entire form comes to resemble the mumblings of a recluse who has finally given up on a society that has long since given up on him.
Towards the end of the film, two students awake in the early morning to find Ray wandering outside their home. They invite their professor into their home, and he explains that he had been out at a faculty party and became fed up, just as Henty in High Green Wall became tired of civilized life. But unlike Henty, Ray was able to find a surrogate home on the margin: "It might be nice to live among people for a change." Even though he is a father figure, of sorts, Ray too is a wanderer, just like his students. Instability is global, and the characters all seem to reach out for some certitude to hold on to. As one student, Tom Farrell, expresses, certainty only destabilizes their lives even further, alienating families and distancing loved ones. Farrell, having furiously cut off most of his beard with large scissors, is sedately shaving the remaining hair while looking in the mirror. Ray converses with him from off-screen.
Farrell: My father is a chief of the detective squad on the New York City police squad. I love him, but we don't get along. He disagrees with my moral convictions. Moral convictions and political beliefs.
Ray: And don't ever call him a pig.
Farrell: There are many that will call him a pig just because he's a cop, but he's a human being like anyone else.
Ray: Just talk to me, Tom. Tell me that again, will you? Just talk to me, will you? Just talk… make me believe you. Don't try to convince me, but talk to me, Tom.
From his wavering voice and unsteady hand, it is obvious that Farrell is about to breakdown. What is uncertain, however, is whether Ray's comments are those of a director or a surrogate-father. I like to believe that they are the latter, expressing a heart-felt sympathy for a wayward father and son, with hopes that they will be able to reconcile their differences. By urging Farrell to "talk to me," Ray is struggling to bridge the gap between generations; he is momentarily replacing the father to whom Farrell cannot speak.
The salvation Ray found with his students was short lived, both within the story and without. Indecision and lack of funds equally frustrated Ray. At the end of his two years at SUNY Binghamton, the film wasn't finished. Bernard Eisenschatz's tremendous biography, Nicholas Ray: An American Journey, details the strenuous editing session Ray and his students went through in order to ready the movie for the 1973 Cannes Film Festival. Unsatisfied, Ray reworked the footage for the next three years, completing a re-edit in 1976, but never fully satisfied with either version11. As if anticipating these endless trials, We Can't Go Home Again ends with Ray's suicide. While hanging from a rope in a barn, he speaks to his students below:
I have been interrupted12. She's right, Richie, let him sleep for a short time. Not too long a time, just long enough to get back his dream. The floodgates are opening and the water is rushing like people against the dams-and the goddamns. But waken him in time. Take care of each other. It is your only chance for survival. All else is vanity, and let the rest of us swing.
Like much of the rest of the film, Ray's closing message is fraught with contradictions: its hope for the younger generation is offset by his own capitulation; the "floodgates" may be "rushing," but Ray seems unable to navigate this surge of ideas; and that one must "sleep" in order to "get back [the] dream" suggests that death (at least on some level) is a necessity for life. Earlier in the film, Ray told one of his students a story about a wise man who went around collecting advice. When this man asked the Sphinx, it replied: "Don't expect too much," to which Ray then added, "… from a teacher." It is as if Ray's greatest life lesson to pass on is the story of his own life: his failures, his successes, his doubts, his hopes, his struggles, his successes—his movies. A belated comeback to the student who questioned Ray's knowledge just because he made some "movies" is that, yes, that is precisely why Ray knows so much. Because by making movies, Ray lived a thousand lives in addition to his own.
In A Lonely Place
1950They Live By Night
1948A Woman's Secret
1949Knock on Any Door
1949Born to Be Bad
1950On Dangerous Ground
1952The Lusty Men
1952Johnny Guitar
1954High Green Wall
1954Rebel Without a Cause
1955Bigger Than Life
1956Hot Blood
1956The True Story of Jesse James
1957Bitter Victory
1957Party Girl
1958King of Kings
196155 Days at Peking
1963The Janitor
1974We Can't Go Home Again
1973-1976Lightning Over Water
1980We don't do comments anymore, but you may contact us here or find us on Twitter or Facebook.


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At his first public appearance since leaving office, former U.S. Attorney Jim Letten says he is still weighing his options for the future.
Letten also said he is optimistic that New Orleans officials and the Justice Department will work together to improve the city's troubled police department, despite recent differences between the two sides over the costs of reform.
Letten wouldn't comment on specifics regarding the police issue or cases he oversaw as U.S. Attorney.
Letten resigned last month. His departure came after two veteran prosecutors in his office admitted anonymously posting criticism of judges and comments about cases on a newspaper website.
He spoke with reporters Tuesday at a hotel where he addressed a benefit for the "Court Watch NOLA" organization, which monitors New Orleans' criminal justice system.


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Memory management and large video file creation
If you have an embedded device that is capturing video, what happens with the overall memory as the video is captured, encoded, stuffed in a container and saved to a file?
Where did my application go
A problem I encountered recently had to do with a GUI response time increasing as the video capture continued. When first starting a video capture, the GUI response time was around 0.5 sec. However, after 7 minutes, the GUI took up to 10 seconds to respond. What is happening?
The video capture solution was based on GStreamer, using the multifilesink element to save the data to a file. In simplified terms, the pipeline was:
v4l2src ! h264_encode ! qtmux ! multifilesink
Giving the kernel hints
The fadvise()and madvise() provide a mechanism to give the kernel a hint that the memory contents will not be used again. In the case of writing a file, using fadvise() allows the data being written to the file to not fill the page cache. In the case of the application disappearing, the cache was getting filled with video file data, and since the part of the application used by the GUI wasn't being activiated, it eventually grew stale in the cache and the kernel tossed out those pages. When the user pressed on the touch screen, page faults started occurring as the kernel brought the GUI related application code back into memory from the file system. Note: this can happen even with no swap as the kernel knows it can reload the application at any time.
By using fadvise(), we were able to dramatically improve the GUI response time. However, it still isn't as fast as when you interact with the GUI at the start of recording. Does anyone have any suggestions on further improvements?


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Whenever we start a new landing page makeover project we like to start-out by seeing what else is out there.
In this new section we'll run through high-traffic landing page design practices examples that we like, and highlight the good and bad.
Please use the comment area below to post some critiques and questions.
To see our comments, just rollover the images.
Brad's Deals of the Day
KGB Deals
Daily Steals
That's all the best landing page inspiration for this post!
We realize it's a lot harder to create than to critique, all the pages above clearly have a lot of thought and energy put behind them.
We will, however, put our money where our mouth is – click here to contact us today and learn how we can drastically increase your website conversion rate for no money up front, and backed by our $10,000 guarantee!


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Create a Website Account - Manage notification subscriptions, save form progress and more.
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All residents and small businesses in the Tallmadge Natural Gas Aggregation Program supplied by Constellation Energy have the first five months, beginning in December 2021, at a variable rate at the Dominion Standard Service Offer minus $.08/McF. After that, the rate will be fixed at $3.73 Mcf through October 2024.
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